Nikolai Alexeyev

Nikolai Alexeyev (Николай Александрович Алексеев) was born on Dec. 23, 1977, in Moscow.

Education: Public Administration, Moscow State University, 1999.

2000-2001: Journalist for daily Segodnya ("Today") newspaper

2001: Left a Ph.D. program at Moscow State University when his thesis topic — the legal status of sexual minorities — was rejected

2005: Established the Internet portal Gayrussia.ru

2006: Alexeyev's first attempt to stage a gay rights protest is rejected by Moscow's City Hall. All similar applications filed during Yury Luzhkov's tenure as mayor — he was fired in September 2010 — are rejected, and all gay rights protests during that time are broken up.

2007: Mayor Luzhkov famously called gay rights parades "satanic" and vowed that he would never allow such events to be held in the city

May 2009: Thirty protesters were detained in a gay rights protest organized by Alexeyev. They included Peter Tatchell, a prominent British gay rights activist, Andy Thayer, an activist from Chicago's Gay Liberation Network, and Alexeyev himself (story).

June 2009: Filed a defamation lawsuit for one kopek against Mayor Yury Luzhkov for saying "queers" undermine a morally healthy society (story)

September 2010: Alexeyev is allegedly abducted by security agents at Moscow's Domodedovo Airport and held for two days, during which time he was pressured to withdraw suits he had filed with the European Court of Human Rights protesting Moscow's banning of gay rights rallies (story)

October 2010: The European Court of Human Rights fined Russia for banning homosexual parades in Moscow, marking a victory for the country's marginalized gay community. Alexeyev had lodged three cases with the court arguing that Russia had violated the European Convention on Human Rights, to which it subscribes as a member state of the Council of Europe (story).

October 2010: Gay rights activists hold the first street protest sanctioned by City Hall, picketing the local office of a Swiss airline that they accused of mistreating Alexeyev in connection with his mysterious abduction in September 2010 (story)

May 2011: City Hall rejected a request by gay rights activists to stage a "educational rally" about the history of attitudes toward homosexuality in science and literature. At the same time, city authorities approved a 3,000-person rally — scheduled for the same day as the gay rally — that will speak against "sexual perversion" and call for prison terms for gays. Despite the ban, gay activists planned to proceed with their rally and file a court appeal (story).

The Sverdlovsk District Court of the city of Kostroma held that gay rights activist Nikolay Alexeyev should be financially compensated for the city's unlawful ban of a gay pride parade, according to a press release published Monday on GayRussia.ru.

Gay rights activist Alexander Yermoshkin said Thursday that local authorities had approved his request to hold a public event against LGBT discrimination on May 17, a move that may see Russia's controversial anti-gay propaganda law tested.

No normalization of ties between Ukraine and Russia is likely unless the region of Crimea, now under Russian control, is returned to Kiev's sovereignty, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said Tuesday.

Although President Vladimir Putin has maintained the approval of the vast majority of Russians, one-third of their countrymen believe Russia is headed in the wrong direction, pollster Levada Center revealed Thursday.

A one-time backer of President Vladimir Putin and CEO of what was once Russia's largest investor, William Browder, told CNN that Putin was one of the world's richest men thanks to hundreds of billions of dollars of stolen wealth.